INFLATION. By J. Shield Nicholson, M.A., Sc.D., LL.D., F.B.A. (Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh). King. 3s. 6d. net.
Until the other day we all thought we were threatened with national bankruptcy, and a great many people think so still, despite the recent rapid conversion to optimism of the Government and the House of Commons. Professor Nicholson, we are sure, is not one of those who are impressed by the change. His interesting and outspoken little book may be summed up in two sentences—"The principal cause of the disorder of the body politic is the abuse of paper money," and "Our present need is to get back to a sound monetary system and to get rid of the mirage of inflation." He does not believe in the theory that an internal debt "makes no difference": that it is merely a transference from one set of pockets to another. And he does not think that the burden of the debt can be removed either by a capital levy or by a continuance of inflation, which, as he gloomily observes, is a popular remedy, both with the industrial and commercial classes. If that continues, its evils will continue—high profits, high wages, higher prices, and a general scarcity. The great practical difficulty is to stop the rise in prices. It may be done partly by greater output and lower profits, partly by reduced public expenditure, but, above all, by a reduction in the volume of paper currency. For that, Professor Nicholson observes, moral courage is needed, and also hard thinking.
IRISH IMPRESSIONS. By G. K. Chesterton. Collins. 7s. 6d. net.
"These are the notes of a visit to Ireland during the dark days when a last effort was made to undo the blunders that had wrecked the great promise of Irish recruitment." Mr. Chesterton, in lamenting the fact that a large section of the Irish population remained neutral in the war, blames both sides. The case against England and the British Government is familiar; but, he argues, however badly Ireland may have been treated in the past, and however the Irish situation was mishandled in the early days of the war, the Sinn Feiners are still to be blamed. They were as men who should have abstained from Marathon because of a quarrel with some archon, or refused to fight Attila because of a grievance against Ætius. All civilization was at stake; that being so, even the claims of nationality should have been, if necessary, postponed—though, in fact, they would have been actually assisted had Ireland made the plunge. Mr. Chesterton states with characteristic force the existence of a definite Irish nationality, a thing to be perceived in any Irish home. As a practical politician he believes that the extreme demand for separation can still—though time presses—be effaced if Dominion Home Rule is offered. The bargaining peasant lives in the fighting rebel; and when even the last Home Rule scheme was postponed a genuine disappointment was to be seen throughout Ireland.
This is his central case. He argues it characteristically: that is to say, his method of exposition, by means of rapid generalizations, digressions, witticisms, allusions, will fascinate those who believe there is great sagacity behind his fireworks, and irritate or bore those who habitually dislike him. In making out a case for Ireland he also makes out a case for a rural, a Catholic, and a "distributive" civilisation. Everywhere there are quotable sayings. He speaks of "the brilliant bitterness of Dublin and the stagnant optimism of Belfast." "Modern industrial society," he says, "is fond of problems, and therefore not at all fond of solutions."
Arguing that on the outbreak of war England abjured her pro-Teutonist delusions, he says the Sinn Feiners fatally played with the thing they had always denounced:
That is why the Easter rising was really a black and insane blunder. It was not because it involved the Irish in a military defeat; it was because it lost the Irish a great controversial victory. The rebel deliberately let the tyrant out of a trap; out of the grinning jaws of the gigantic trap of a joke.
"Imperialism," he observes, "is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism." Such epigrams—and there is always something in them—are all over the book; but in two places, where he is talking of the war and of Kettle's death and where he celebrates the Christian virtues of charity and humility, he reaches an eloquence almost comparable to that of the magnificent passage at the close of his Short History of England. That passage deserves to go into all anthologies of English prose henceforth compiled.